Splinters
by Salem Merciolago
Summary: What you break will mend all the stronger, but the rubies weeping from her shattered bones beg to differ amidst their bleating. MarluxiaXLarxene, heavy themes, warnings inside.


**Trigger warnings: extreme self-harm, very hidden rape/child molestation references (you really have to be looking for them to find them), anorexia/bulimia.**

 **I don't usually like the title "trigger warnings", but this is a pretty heady fiction. Written as a present for my fiancée, after we had a huge discussion about how some people break their own bones in an extreme form of self-harm. Please read through with caution.**

Splinters

She pushed.

Pain spiked through her finger, a steady burning that screamed B-movie murder for her to stop. A wry smile made its way on red painted lips as she pushed harder, marveling at how elastic her body was, how difficult this actually proved. Tiny sparks of white heat began to jump inside the burning now, causing her heart to quicken.

Just a little further.

Impatient, the smile twisted into a concentrated grimace, and she rammed her finger as hard as she could against the brick wall corner. A muffled snap sent her royal blue bloodlines deep into the grimy crevasses of the school, where they turned shock crimson-vermillion and wept down the rusty rust digging into white rose.

Thunder usually comes after lightning, but she counted anyway in milliseconds as the sound reversed itself into sunshine light. Stark electricity coursed through her hand and arm, pins and needles like something out of a nightmare and painted red ruby pomegranate _stained_ lips popped open in a perfect O. A rush of a breeze and she was stumbling, in her lungs and in her dainty little black widow heels, as she cradled her weeping hand close (but not close enough to ruin her pretty canary yellow dress). She blinked rapidly, staring intently at the odd angle her finger was forced into. It throbbed in return, sobbing, screaming, sending that delicious lightning deep into her core.

 _Why have you done this to me? How could you hurt me so? I did nothing to you, please, don't hurt me anymore!_

She smiled cruelly down at the crying appendage, a laugh threatening to break from her cheery-O lips. Oh, to think one had such a power. She swayed, catching herself on the wounded feelings-are-hurt finger and biting into pomegranate (seeds and skin) to ward off the scream that now replaced the laugh. Her breath took the spiral staircase and she figured it was time to find the nurse, even though all she wanted to do was sit and make her way down the line, pop them all like bubble wrap, snicked apart like a kit-kat bar.

Steadying herself on shaking ankles, Larxene made her way across the courtyard, leaving a trail of her finger's teardrops in her wake.

X

The last time a boy tried to ask her out, Larxene hit him hard enough in the face to swell his eye shut for a week. She'd been hoping to at least fracture her knuckles, but all she got was bruising, so she hit the hard wall in the bathrooms after school until spiders crawled up her bones and laid eggs in her veins. She told the nurse and her father and anyone who asked that she fractured her hand from the punch, had caught his cheekbone or something, and she was severe enough in her defense that no one pointed out how doughy the boy's face was. A semi-truck could have hit the thing and suffered no damage.

Regardless, the last time a boy tried to ask her out, she'd rendered him half blind for a week.

It didn't stop them from wanting her, or trying to talk to her, but a jerk of her hand, a glare from blue eyes was all it took to get them to scatter like scared baby bugs on linoleum. She was talked _about_ by the girls, having fangs too ugly to warrant even group bullying. But everything was commented upon, from her odd hair to her money to the way she dressed (yellow like the sun, like dying canaries, like pus from the open sore she'd almost gotten quarantined for), and it didn't take a genius to realize she wasn't the type of person you befriended.

Like a praying mantis, she was better viewed from a distance, careful and exotic.

Today she fulfilled that idea, wearing a lemonade tank top and rosy blushing daisy dukes. Her shoes were tall and spindly, an insect green that shouted poisonous in tandem with her dart frog eyes that watered almost too big in her pointed face. Her hair was always sort of buggy, antennae-like and slicked down. Larxene liked bugs. They couldn't scream a peep as you pulled their legs and wings off, forced to suffer in complete silence until they died from pain or shock or whatever bugs could die of.

She tapped her finger cast against the cafeteria table loudly. Bugs dying, what a concept. She didn't even know if they were truly alive to begin with, so who was to say she wasn't doing them a disservice when she disposed of them? They were made inhuman because no person would kill something human, but no person wants to coexist with bugs. Larxene yawned and flipped over a piece of limp lettuce. Her lunch bored her, plain and healthy. She longed for something sweet, maybe with that Bavarian cream inside of it, pale pale yellow like newborn chicks and smeared on her lips like the innards of a caterpillar. Her stomach growled at her for thinking such a thought and she banished it, taking a long drink of her water to quiet it down. Something of that ilk hadn't made its way through her house in a very long time.

It was sunny out today, a gross heat combining with liquid brightness that made her sensitive eyes narrow and her skin crawl. Sunny days leeched the world of its everything, washing the natural color out of the fabric and shoving it deep down in cloudless blue throats for a different day. They made her head ache and her bones weary.

Worst of all, they made her bored.

"Hey."

She sighed as audibly as she could, twirling in her seat to glare at the boy speaking to her. He towered above her, broad shouldered and square jawed. Her lip curled as he brushed back hair in the same shade as her shorts, her teeth set on edge with pink fairy sugar. He was holding a hot lunch tray, nothing but sweets piled upon it, and the fairy sugar crept down her esophagus, the scent making her want to hurl and binge all at once. She settled for twisting her healing finger under her thigh, the tiny shots of pain not as intense as she needed them to be. Larxene felt her anger billow at the thought, and let it go at the fruity man in front of her.

"What the fuck do you think you want, faggot?" She sniped, grinding her finger into the seat with her bony thigh. The boy smiled (even though he looked grown up like a man) and sat down a few seats away from her.

"I want to sit next to a pretty girl, is that such a crime?" He replied, taking to arranging his sweets by color. She sneered at him, wrenching her finger out from its torture chamber and purposefully knocking it against the edge of the table.

"It is when you fuck men, filthy piece of shit," she hissed, partially out of anger and partially from the pain that now pulsed in her healing bones. She'd splintered her finger, that day, outside the school alone and unattended. It would take longer for it to heal than if it had been a clean break. She was hoping to prolong the process.

The rose-haired teen just laughed like raw silk and picked up a golden pastry brushed with strawberry lip gloss frosting.

"Oh, honey, the men of the world wish I would fuck them, it would leave them more women," he retorted smoothly. "I'm Marluxia. They tell me you're…feisty."

Larxene gaped at him openly, struck dumb. Feisty? Out of every word in the vocabulary of a private school student, he tells her she's feisty?

"What kind of sick fetish do you have?" She snapped, glaring at the pastry instead of the teen. He glanced at it, then grinned wide enough to reveal his canines.

"Sick fetish, indeed," he repeated, then bit into the pastry. Bavarian cream. Sweet oceans and gloppy jellyfish, a sunset in slow motion and sand the flavor of fried all clinging to this rosy boy's rosy lips, flower petals leaking sugar to invoke the bees.

Larxene sucked in her lips to make sure she wasn't drooling as a different kind of pain shot through her now, an ache in her belly that asked her why she wasn't eating that too, an ache that begged for more than limp lettuce and lukewarm water. She stood up, catching her hipbone hard against the edge of the table. Marluxia's eyebrows rose as he heard the dull clunk, chewing on his sweet beach as in afterthought, watching this buggy girl gather her stuff as quickly as she could.

"You okay? That sounded painful," he said, licking his petal lips and dragging Larxene's last nerve through the golden sand of his pastry. She bit back a frustrated screech and almost rammed her hip into the table again, just to prove a point.

"Don't fucking talk to me, fucking freak," she growled, storming off on her spindly heels and inflated sense of dignity. Through hallway after hallway, passing lockers that were all the same achingly faded color, until she reached the far bathrooms. Neglected due to their out of the way location, she was guaranteed privacy within their walls for at least the rest of the lunch hour.

She flung her backpack on the ground, letting out the screech she didn't in the lunch room. She'd pull at her hair, but it was hell to put back, so instead she just kicked at a sink until her leg shook and her toe bled. Letting herself fall heavily to the floor, she reveled in the shivery pain that scuttled up her hips and thighs as her pelvic bones hit the tile, rattling her only barely before she yanked her shoe off and chucked it at the window. She threw herself onto her back, jabbing prominent shoulder blades into the floor as she kicked the sink again and again, her toe bending and slipping on the tears it left to stain yellowing porcelain. The electricity was back, shooting up her legs like heroin pictures on the overhead, needles like the ones she found in the park and on her daddy's bedroom floor.

 _Feisty. That sounded painful._

She could feel her eyes filling up with more than lizard saliva, turning into rainclouds and she shoved the heels of her hands deep into them, causing stars to break out behind her eyelids. Over and over, she jammed her toes against the patient sink, wondering what exactly she'd have to do to shatter the bones in her foot, not just her toes.

 _I just wanted to sit next to a pretty girl. Pretty._

 _Pretty girl._

Larxene opened her mouth and screamed to shatter her teeth.

X

Maybe if she broke something prominent enough, her daddy would stop working and stop shooting and actually pay attention to her, give her more than just silly stuffed animals he bought inside flickering gas stations with the money he got from the men in knit hats. She could choke on their stuffing and it hurt more than broken bones to know she couldn't break even spaghetti over their fluffy heads.

It was always dark in the apartment when she came home, alone with the spiders and Chinese takeout her daddy left her in the fridge. She would throw off her shirt, or dress, or skirt, and walk around in only her shoes, stabbing stained wooden chopsticks into stained cardstock containers and clicking all over the grubby kitchen floor. They had no blinds or curtains on the windows and that was how she liked it, open and raw like a dog bite left to fester.

She left the fridge open and ate only a fourth of the takeout, leaving the rest for the roaches (or her daddy, but it was all the same in the end) and turning on the television. She sat on the bed she never shared with her father and let the lights play over her pale skin as she ignored her hunger and throbbing pain in her toe. It had been easily enough fixed in the nurse's office, where she was asked questions in eye glances and wrapped in white gauze like her toe was a ghost. It was still ruthlessly shoved into her shoe, swollen and angry within its prison. She let the pain do what it wanted up and down her leg, her muscles twitching in time with the gallant music on TV.

A gunshot broke the air outside.

Larxene shut off the television and went to bed.

X

No one questioned her at school anymore. No one considered abuse, no one cared about her bruises and broken bones. Her daddy paid for the services, sighed, and left the hospitals, shaking his angular features at a pretty nurse and belaying how reckless a daughter he had.

 _She likes those…extreme sports, you know? Skating and biking…_

White paper crinkling under her thighs, she would cross her legs and fix the doctor with a stare.

 _I keep telling her to stop, that she needs to…you know. Be a proper lady._

Laugh, laugh, laugh.

 _I take away the boards and bikes but she finds other ways. I can only hope that she figures out how to be safe, you know?_

Hop off the table, sway, steal the suckers for the little suckers, and leave.

Her daddy never followed.

X

He was back, this time with a lacquered, monogrammed lunchbox adorned in fancy fancy painted roses. Polished chopsticks glimmered in large hands as he delicately ate piece after piece of sushi, forever petals trapped within the glassy confines of the expensive utensils. Larxene bristled, wanting to tell him that those kinds of sticks were only meant for hair. She heard the crunch three seats down, however, and recoiled as she realized each little sushi was made entirely of candy and marshmallow rice treat.

Her toe was too swollen for her pretty little murder heels today, so she wore the red wedges with the wide open toe and the pale yellow dress daddy bought her for Easter. It was a shame yellow was never the color of love.

"What happened to your toe? Stub it a little too hard? Break a nail?" Marluxia cooed at her, breaking her monotonous train of thought. She stared at him blankly, fork poised delicately above the tiny Tupperware dish of broccoli she'd picked out of last night's takeout.

"Fuck you."

She didn't feel like pleasantries today, nor did she feel like explaining herself. The steady crunch began to grate on her nerves and she lost the appetite she always had.

"Oh, so touchy. I just wondered," he replied flippantly, waving the expensive chopsticks around. "Anything I can do to help? I mean, it must hurt to walk on it."

"What the fuck do you think I'm going to let you do, carry me to class?" Larxene snapped, shoving the lid back on the container, trapping last night in plastic. "Sick fucking piece of shit."

Marluxia hummed as he eyed her tiny lunch.

"I suppose such an offer stands, but not for long," he teased. She sent him a look of disgust and horror, which he returned with mock hurt. "What, a lady like you doesn't want to be treated like a princess? I thought that was what this whole cold shoulder act was all about."

Larxene stood, elegantly, without knocking her hipbone against the table this time (despite the landmines in her head screaming she should in round spurts) and picked up her lunchbox. It looked weary next to Marluxia's, sagging like it knew it couldn't keep up. Pursing her lips (strawberry pink today, glossy like night juice and dewdrops), she left without a word.

X

It had been a week.

Her father hadn't been home, the only indication that he was leaving for any amount of time being the credit card on the television. Larxene bought herself a new dress the color of wasps and condemned herself to old, almost rotten leftovers for not being enough to bring him home.

Marluxia continued to pursue her, finding her even when she skipped out on lunch. Marluxia, with his lacquered lunchbox. Marluxia, with his florid hair. Marluxia, with blue eyes like lab-created topaz and words like candy eels.

By the fifth day, she stopped going to school.

Day seven hit and she wondered whose voicemail all the office calls were going to. Maybe if she gave the school her daddy's real number, he'd come back home.

X

When food ran out and reruns became boring, Larxene went back to school. She wore her new dress like she didn't give it to herself and reveled in the stares she got from disappointed teachers and staff.

If daddy had to work, daddy had to work. It wasn't her fault.

Marluxia found her chewing on grass blades and hoping to cut her tongue. Maybe it was her fault.

"You're hard to track down," he said, his tone friendly but curious. Larxene heard what he didn't say and swallowed some grass whole.

 _Why weren't you at school? Where were you? Why are you avoiding me?_

It cut on the way down, like Marluxia's self-pity.

"Leave it to a freak to track me down," she muttered, stuffing another piece of dry grass into her mouth like the cow she was. "Fucking stalker. Can't you pay a man to fuck you and just leave me alone?"

Marluxia smiled as she tied the grass into a knot with her tongue and spat it out at his feet. He sat in front of her, opening his lunchbox with a flourish.

"Can't you accept a compliment and just let me court you?" He joked, fluffing cotton candy hair and reaching into his lunchbox to pull out a pink truffle, which he slid past pinker lips. Larxene bristled at the reply and prayed he would choke on the too rich chocolate.

Her toe twinged, shoved into another tight stiletto, and she forced it to move, wishing she could break her whole damn leg across his perfect marshmallow teeth.

"Why do you eat so many fucking sweets?" She mumbled around her tongue. The abrupt change of subject made her ribs burn and her cheeks ache. It felt like giving in.

Marluxia leaned close to her, an amusement park on a sunny day, thick and cloying. A few strands of his candy floss hair got caught up in her lip gloss and she resisted the urge to lick her lips clean.

"Because it attracts the honeybees," he breathed, a fly in her ear, a carnival mask in her face. She could taste the sweetness of artificially colored chocolate as he murmured sweets into her lungs. "And sometimes, wasps."

X

Marluxia went home that day with a slight concussion and one less lacquered lunchbox.

Larxene went home and stood with her bare back against the glass window, unable to stop pinching her lips.

X

Three nights later, her daddy came home with a big stuffed bunny, thrusting its claim of "I love Detroit!" into her shaking arms and passing out on her bed. The bunny smelled like a truck stop. Larxene threw it into the bed she never shared with her daddy and wondered if Marluxia's number was in the phone book.

X

Rose was a stupid last name, Larxene decided. It was more common than she'd thought, and as a minor, of course only Marluxia's parents would be listed. If at all, because (she realized with frustration) everyone used cellphones nowadays.

She tore at her lips as she called the fifth Rose in the phone book. Rose, like the roses that adorned his fancy lunchbox. The phone was picked up and her fingers came away dripping red petals. A grumpy hello was muttered and she pushed over it.

"Is Marluxia there?"

The voice grunted, then sighed.

"Who's calling?" It asked, the scratchy baritone of an old man. Of course his parents were old. Old like the trust fund the pink haired fuck was nursing from, old like the dust bunnies under the bed she never shared with her daddy, old like yesterday's takeout.

"Friend of his," Larxene clipped out, feeling a bubble of blood pop on her aching lips. "Does he have, like, a cellphone or something, this is really important."

The man paused, then Larxene heard the groan of bedsprings.

"You got a pen and paper?" He said finally, and Larxene put her phone on speaker, opening up her notes.

"Hit me. "

Three minutes and one weary good-bye later, Larxene rubbed smudged blood from her screen and tapped the number the man had given her, the hyperlink opening the call option. Blowing more wet petals down her chin, she tapped "call" and sat on her broken finger, grinding it into the cement step below her with her pelvic bone.

An automated voice came on, telling her to please wait while the party was reached. Tinny classical music began to play, and Larxene grimaced. Who did this guy think he was?

She waited with bated breath and dripping down to her chin as she tried not to gouge her eardrums out.

"Hello?" A sleepy pink mumble tumbled out of the phone, startling Larxene in its difference from his normal voice.

"Marluxia?" She barked, the surprise making her too loud.

"Yeah, who's this?" He grouched, not sounding fully awake. Larxene shifted, eyelids fluttering like clouds across electric blue skies as it wrenched her broken finger in every wrong way.

"Larxene. Come pick me up," she demanded, shivering as a chilly wind blew through her bones, icing out the pain in her finger for a few seconds. She hated fall. Warm days that made everything bright, a lie that turned into bitter nights that numbed her feelings.

"Lar…Larxene? I can't, I'm sleeping," Marluxia whined as she listened to him roll over in bed. Larxene frowned and used her teeth to keep the petals on her lips from closing up around their bud, staining them a new shade of whore's lipstick.

"Come pick me up, I need your help." More blood dribbled down her chin, falling on the dress she didn't buy herself and giving it pin-up girl polka dots.

"You know," he began, "if I'm not mistaken, you did just send me home with a fucking concussion. What makes you think I'm not just going to hang up right now?"

Marluxia was waking up and it was making him angry. Larxene pouted to no one and bounced her bare heels against the cement edges on the steps below her, the gritty tingles barely conquering the chilly wind threatening to kill them.

"Because no one else can help me, only you," she replied wistfully into the phone, watching flecks of ruby fly to taint the skirt in her lap. "I _need_ you, Marluxia Rose."

There was silence as her heels broke skin on false stone and strewed more petals around like miniature flower girls. A sigh wiggled its way through the phone, dragging her torn lips into a grin as she heard his father and didn't have to hear his next words to know she'd won.

"Where?"

X

"You know, this is not exactly where I'd pictured us meeting," Marluxia said, raising his voice above the wind as it shook them both. Larxene just stared out across the city, reveling in the feeling of being this high up above everything. The parking garage was always empty this time of night, always twenty stories high, and always windy. High gates deterred jumpers, but that's not what she was here to do tonight.

"Where'd you think we were meeting, my fucking house? Not on your life, pretty boy," she retorted, letting her dress flap wherever it desired in the heavy gale. She was a shameless girl, like her daddy always said. Shameless and worthless.

Marluxia just turned his back to the wind, his bubblegum pink scarf clashing with his dreamsicle orange knit hat. His windbreaker was a cocaine smear on the black salty background of downtown and all Larxene wanted to do was rip off that stupid fake knit hat and burn it to ashes. Who wore a scarf and hat in the fall, anyway?

But they were not here to burn stupid fake hats.

"You're strong, aren't you?" She asked, sidling closer to him in her bare feet and still bandaged toe. It wasn't elegant and it wasn't cute, but she'd foregone her pretty shoes in favor of getting away from her daddy as fast as she could. Marluxia raised a groomed eyebrow at her, jeweled eyes glancing sideways. His hair looked horrific under that hat and over that scarf, Larxene thought, the wrong shade of pink for that kind of coordination.

A twinge in her foot said she'd stepped on something sharp, and she was reminded that she spent just as much time running from her daddy as he did from her. It wasn't a pleasant reminder and she almost hit Marluxia in her eagerness for an answer, a distraction from the thoughts bouncing around her skull.

"Yeah, I guess so," he replied, flippant. She glared at him.

"You _guess_ so? What does that mean? Mister High and Mighty _guesses_ he's strong?" Larxene snapped, actually hitting him this time, a hard slap on his coat-come-cocaine arm. He jerked away from her like she was used to everyone doing (finally, he got the hint, right when she didn't want him to anymore).

"Hey! If you're just going to hit and berate me all night, I'm going back home to go to sleep," he retorted. "Some of us actually go to school on a regular basis."

Larxene let out a heavy sigh and kicked the ground with her good foot, relishing in the scrape of asphalt against her soft, prim toes.

"God, you're annoying," she griped, aiming her words at the ground like she didn't mean them. She needed him here, dammit, why couldn't she just ask him? What the fuck was wrong with her?

Oh yeah. Everything.

Marluxia spun idly on his heel, blowing invisible breath into the flat sky. Larxene dared a glance at him, his disruptively put together outfit looking somehow in place with the starless night and the bright lamps of the parking garage framing his figure.

"I can't believe I decided to get out of my warm, comfortable—"

"You're such fucking hipster bullshit."

She cut him off and felt no remorse for it, staring hard at him. He sniffed and looked too ruffled by the interruption to say anything in return. Oh yes, how dare she speak over his complaint.

"What happened to your lips?" He asked suddenly, his too large hand reaching out and thumbing over it like he had a right. She jerked away, her heel pressing harder against the sharp object beneath it, and she realized she was standing on broken glass. His thumb came away rose red, which he looked at curiously before gazing at her.

Larxene wondered how heavy she'd have to be for the glass to break her skin without her pushing down.

"Noth…nothing happened," she grumbled, her dress flapping up in the wind, blowing up about her waist where her daddy thought it belonged. "I happened. You happened."

Marluxia furrowed his brow, confused, then smiled something strange. It sent ants down her spine and she struggled not to rip the skin from her body.

"I happened? What do you mean by that?" He said, his voice smooth. He was strong, so strong. Hands like a Gollum's, they could crush her dead in an instant. "I don't remember biting them at all when I kissed you."

Kissed you. _Kissed you_. Pretty.

Larxene's breath caught in her throat and she choked on spit she wished she didn't have, coughing into the chilly air and wishing it would crack her bones. She rocked back on her heels and the glass merely dug into them. She wasn't heavy enough after all, and for some reason that didn't comfort her like it usually would.

"Fucking…fuck," she coughed out. How hard would she have to cough before she could cough up blood? She'd probably vomit first. How repulsive.

Just like her.

 _Kissed. Feisty. Kissed you._

"Why do you even want to do that shit with me," she spat, staring at the dark drop stains on the asphalt where her bug's saliva had fallen, clear like teardrops. Marluxia's smile turned into a smirk and all of a sudden he was too close again, filling her space with enormity, with ego, with sugar birds melting in the sunshine all gooey and crying as they turned black to die.

"Because you seemed so untouchable," he explained, his fingers dancing over her hair, ruffling it out of place and pissing her off. She kept her eyes on his expensive shoes. "And yet, every day that I saw you, you were all bruised up. Broken apart. Held together by gauze and your ferocity. How was that happening, if no one could touch you?"

She jerked away from him, completely forgetting, for a moment, why she was here with him. A bubble of fear arose in her chest, the first thing to fill her up since Monday, and she dared it to pop as she built for a scream. How did a person get so _tall_? He eclipsed her, a moon far bigger than the measly sun that never shone very bright anyway.

"Does your father do it?"

The bubble popped, but the scream she had built tumbled down like the Tower of Babel, settling in her broken bones and she shoved him as hard as she could. He stumbled backward a few steps, eyes wide and surprised, and the Tower to Heaven rebuilt itself on tongues and she screeched,

"NO I DO IT TO _MYSELF_."

The wind rushed in on the silence between them, sweeping her words away into the dark night sky to catch them on streetlamps and nebulas. Marluxia stared at her, his eyes so startling a blue they made her jump, made her scrape her heel against the glass and _finally_ (finally) breaking the skin to consecrate the ground.

She hadn't wanted to say that.

"…Why?"

She gaped at him, his open face, his broad shoulders, his stupid fucking orange knit hat. Why? _Why?_

She didn't know. Say that.

"It's the only thing that grows back stronger."

She didn't mean to say _that_.

Marluxia's face twitched, and for a moment, she thought he was going to yell at her, scold her for some bizarre reason like her daddy never did. But he didn't.

He smiled.

It was beatific and horrible, shuddering down into her stomach like ice chips she swallowed to rake up her esophagus. It raked her up, definitely, but it spread further than her stomach, out into her limbs, and she trembled, feeling the cold throughout. Underneath her foot was warm, hot even, and beginning to get slippery. She ground her heel into the grit as she waited for him to do something, anything except leer like that at her.

"I never told you, did I?" He murmured, his words becoming the wind. He sauntered over to her lazily, swinging his hips like childhood memories. She trembled beneath him, pathetic and small, for once too largely aware of just how frail she was, a praying mantis beneath a tiger's paws. He reached one hand out and this time, she didn't shy away.

He stroked her cheek, her lips, her neck. Looking her in her eyes, he held her gaze as he pushed a manicured nail into the fresh scabs on her lip, and _dragged_. It ripped open, drawing gasps from her heart like a punctured balloon.

"I always did like ripping the wings off of bees."

X

Her daddy still didn't pay attention to her, but it did turn his head when she walked in the door with a cast all the way up her arm.

Lemon yellow, her favorite.

"…Happened to your arm, Baby L?" He slurred out, using the name she hated the most. He was sprawled on the bed she never shared with him and she surveyed the apartment with eyes that reminded her of Jesus (now that she had a point of reference).

"I fixed it," she whispered, not really in reply but more as an afterthought, tip-tapping her way across the tiny kitchen to pull a pair of glass chopsticks out of the drying rack. The suspended petals weren't red enough for her taste anyway. She pulled up her dress, stuffing it momentarily over her cast so she could stick the chopsticks into the waistband of her panties, then yanked it back down. She spun and walked to the door, sparing her daddy a glance over her shoulder.

He looked confused.

And high.

So she simply smiled, sweet as honey and pink lemonade, her gloss matching the strawberry tint of her dress, and left, drawing the door closed behind her softly.

As she made her way down the cement stairs she'd never walk again, she wrangled her phone from her bra and unlocked it, uncaring if she was looking where she was going or not. All the better if she tripped and fell, right?

The number she tapped was the only one in the call log.

"Bumblebee," his smooth voice was always able to make her heart do double time, even on top of the triple time it already did as punishment for her starvation. "You get what you needed?"

"Of course," she replied, feeling her ankle wobble as she almost misplaced a step. "Like taking candy from a baby."

"Excellent. I'll be waiting," he purred. She smiled wider, like he could see it. Her dress blew up in the crisp autumn afternoon air, catching her vision. She had never worn so much pink before, but for him, she was willing to make sacrifices.

After all, he was helping her with so much.

"Oh, and…I know how hard it must be to walk in those heels," Marluxia crooned. "Wouldn't it be a shame if…you tripped?"

The ocean rose up inside her and she focused on hanging up the phone, softening her vision so the steps below her became fuzzy and hard to see.

Her ankle wobbled again, and this time…

The smile on her face didn't.


End file.
